Happy BB Friday! Jamko, babies, AND puppies given the spoilers for tonight's epi! Bestill my heart. Looking forward to a little fluff! Need it after today's chapter!

Chapter 11

"Jamie, stop! Where do you think you're going?" a father's near-breathless voice questioned from the doorway as Frank witnessed his son's back visibly stiffen in response.

"Now he shows up," Jamie gritted under his breath with a heavy sigh and refused to turn around from his seat on the far side of the bed, although momentarily abandoning an attempt to stretch down against his sore left-sided ribs and tie the goddamn shoelace that remained elusively just out of reach.

"Home," he finally answered bitterly, shoving his foot in the sneaker with the lace tucked to the side instead and having no idea when all was said in done in the next five minutes that his apartment, or the family house in Bay Ridge for the matter, would be two of the last places he would decide to seek refuge. "I'm going home."

"We have to talk first," Frank insisted, unnerved at the idea of his youngest leaving the relative safety of the hospital early against medical advice, especially given his present, presumed state.

"About what?" Jamie demanded evenly as he got to his feet, still consumed by his own thoughts over the fallout from the hostage situation, and without turning to see just how badly shaken his father looked. He rummaged around in the closet to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything before realizing Eddie hadn't brought his wallet back yet and he didn't have any money on hand to pay for cab fare. Undeterred, with ride apps available on his phone, anyway, he pulled out his coat, thinking all the while that his father was just there to try and smooth over this kerfuffle with Danny, likely already having been informed of his reaction to that picture by a well-intentioned sister. Even so, the timing of this visit was somewhat suspicious, so soon after that text and early in the morning before posted visiting hours after nearly a week of non-contact.

"That… the woman that was just here," Frank stammered, unable to get a good read on his son without seeing his face. "I… I had no idea she would bring this to you first!"

"Obviously," Jamie replied coldly on a completely different wavelength while gingerly putting his left arm in the jacket sleeve before drawing it the rest of the way on, still assuming they were talking about Danny's role in that picture which had been crumpled and thrown down to the bottom of the bed.

"SHE HAD NO RIGHT!" Frank insisted as more than a little of his own anger showed through.

"Seriously?" Jamie finally wheeled around at that tone, shocked at first to see the utter gravity of his father's expression given what he thought was just another nasty, but not unprecedented, tiff with his older brother—ultimately attributing that look to the fact that his dad had been purportedly ill all week.

"MAYBE SHE HAD EVERY RIGHT! And how could you tell who she was or why she was here? Were you watching?" he barked back. "Am I under surveillance? Don't give me that line about the Commissioner knowing everything! You're the one that's been hiding something all week with no intention of letting me find out, right?"

"That's not true!" Frank insisted, stung by that comment but still clueless over the fact that he and his son were engaged in two starkly separate exchanges at the moment even though Jamie's reaction wasn't quite on par with what he expected. "You have to believe me, I always intended to have this conversation… just not here, or like this! I wanted you to be well and have some answers for you first!"

"Answers? That's what you were looking for? Hey, me too! So, let's start with why you sent Detective Reagan out on a job when he's supposed to be suspended or wasn't that going to be part of the conversation?"

"That's what you want to ask me about?" it was Frank's turn to be confused, hurt, and thrown off kilter. Certainly, given the sensitivities of the topic he was prepared to discuss, Danny's involvement ranked well below almost everything else he could imagine. "I thought you'd be more concerned about your mother and what that man did to her!" he defended, his anger still triggered by the thought of what Milner had gotten away with so long ago.

"MOM?" Jamie stared back at his father as if he had just grown two heads. "Just what the hell are YOU talking about? What does any of this have to do with her?" he demanded as his eyes narrowed and the two realized neither had any idea of what they were genuinely arguing over.

"Maureen Saunders," Frank backtracked as his voice lowered and he grasped the painful fact that they were going to have to start at the beginning anyway after an unfortunate contentious start. "What did she tell you?"

"Dad, what's going on?" Jamie likewise stood down and wondered for a brief second if perhaps this was all a dream and he had been overmedicated at some point. Nothing that had happened since he'd hung up the phone with Eddie was making any sense.

"What did she tell you?" his father reiterated, and the look on his face made it clear that an answer was going to be required before they could go any further.

"She showed up pretending to be my sister and gave me that picture then said she had a message for Erin… that some doctor named William Milner was a rapist and needed to be indicted or this Saunders woman was going to air some kind of hatchet job on the DA's office tomorrow night on New York 1."

"Pretending?" Frank latched onto that word as it was clear now that his son had just been used as a pawn in a high stakes game and whatever it was that he had been initially upset about paled in comparison to what now needed to be revealed.

"Yeah, that's what she told the desk to get up here," Jamie admitted, his unease growing by the second. Something was obviously terribly wrong here, and suddenly he wanted nothing to do with hearing what that was. If he could have, he would have crawled back into the bed, pulled the covers over his head and started the whole day over again without a complaint. The next comment from his father confirmed that sentiment and had his blood turn cold.

"Son, sit down. We need to talk," Frank started with his voice turning raspy as his throat closed. "This is hard to say," he confirmed those worst thoughts.

"What?" Jamie panicked and refused to move, his mind spinning through a thousand different scenarios like a Rolodex on high speed, none of which were good or fit with the limited evidence he had on hand. Eddie wasn't even at work yet, so at least the thought of this being one of "those" calls from the Police Commissioner was quickly dismissed.

"This Milner case… it's… it's become personal," Frank began with a vast understatement. "Some information's come to light. That man," he swallowed, having a difficult time ascribing the term to Milner. "It turns out that man assaulted Maureen Saunders' mother when she went to him in a professional capacity more than two decades ago, and Saunders recently discovered he's her biological father. Her mother was raped without her knowledge, that's why she's so upset," he confirmed and emphasized what would be a common point. "He's been doing it for years. Erin's had the information for the last six weeks and is trying to bring an indictment on him for another case, but the odds are not good. Saunders is using everything at her disposal, ethical or not, to press for it."

"Personal to her, or personal to us?" Jamie demanded, an inkling of where this was heading just now beginning to trickle into his resistant brain given the mention of his mother even though it was railing against that notion and trying to shore up a wall of denial. This must be about his sister, he reasoned instead. Surely this was all because his father was trying to protect Erin from an unprofessional attack and using Danny to help. Suddenly he was more than happy that his tenacious brother had been brought in to do the job he was so good at it. Screw the chain of command and his own role in it.

"Personal to you and me," Frank admitted with words and a heartbroken look that wiped away the final bit of rebuttal. "To all of us."

"What information?" Jamie circled back around to use his opponent's own words to draw it out as was so often his way.

"You said it came to light. What did?"

"Jameson…" his father tried to soften the blow.

"WHAT CAME TO LIGHT, DAD?!"

"Your mother," Frank nearly choked as he fought to get the words out, all the while as Jamie was shaking his head and trying just as hard not to listen to them. "There's no easy way to say this. She was a patient of Milner's too before you were born, and he... I had no idea…" he trailed off, unable to say that part of it out loud and cursing his own role in bringing on the raw disbelief he saw welling up in Jamie's eyes as the truth slowly seeped in. "I had no idea about any of this until they did those blood typing tests on us the other night when you came here. You and your mother's… they're the same, but it can't be that way between me and her. Dr. Patricelli noticed, and DNA confirmed it."

"It wasn't your Mom's fault," he added, desperate to make that assurance after a long reign of shocked silence continued, thinking that might offer his stunned youngest child a small bit of comfort as it had for his own heart.

"Let's go home, Jamie," Frank begged some more after another extended break when there was still no reply, the symbolism of taking his son back to the house in Bay Ridge from the hospital just as he and Mary had brought him into their lives together more than thirty years ago was not lost.

"We can talk more there."

"Not… her… fault," Jamie finally broke his speechlessness and repeated in a slow, shocked monotone as he tried to comprehend exactly what that meant before the dam was breached as the pain rushed in and threatened to change their once close father-son relationship forever.

"You're telling me it's not her fault that I'm the bastard son of a serial rapist that assaulted God-only-knows how many women, including my own mother, AND THAT'S SUPPOSED TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER?!" he cried, his eyes now gone more disturbingly glassy and dark as his father had ever seen them before.

"NO! That's not what I meant! And you're NOT HIS SON, you're MY SON! Jameson Reagan, don't you ever think anything different!" Frank insisted even though he'd had the exact same difficulty expressing those thoughts when all of this ugliness was first exposed. Now that he was on the other side of it though, he realized how hurtful those simple semantics really were.

"I only said that because I didn't want you to be angry with Mom like I was all week for something that she didn't do! I thought…" he paused before admitting it out loud. "I thought she cheated on me before we knew."

"WE?!" Jamie laser focused on that single word as the last straw while the bile-like feeling of betrayal that Frank had been experiencing rose in his own throat and threatened to choke out all reason. Everything that was happening merged together and began to blur around the edges.

"So, Mom didn't have an affair or anything, and that makes it better for you… and everyone else already knows. You ran DNA and never even bothered to say anything to me? THAT'S WHY YOU'VE BEEN STAYING AWAY? So, Danny could work the case instead?"

"NO! Jamie, please listen! I know how hard this is to hear, believe me! But it wasn't like that at all!" Frank pleaded and sensed he had just lost any hope of having the time to explain the necessary details before those irrational emotions he had experienced himself took over and left his son unable to absorb them. "We were together in my office when the evidence came together and brought it out! No one had any idea all of this was connected to you! Your sister was there to tell me to stay the hell away from the DA's investigation, and Danny didn't know why I asked him to look into anything. He thought he was working on a cold case, my cold case. I would have never put anyone before you that way if I knew!"

"BUT YOU DID!" his deeply emotionally wounded and inconsolable son countered. "You knew all week, and you couldn't come to me instead? I had to find out like this?" the suffocating shock was giving way to an undeniable urge to run before any of the other details came out and overwhelmed him. "God, I… I can't do this anymore!" Jamie exclaimed as the fingers from his opposite hand gripped that irritating coded hospital band around his left wrist—the one that proclaimed his name as "Reagan, Jameson H" and felt like a complete lie now. Despite using all his strength, he was unable to yank the stubborn tear-resistant material off and gave up instead, darting for the door before his father could move to block it.

"Jamie, stop! Where do you think you're going?" Frank closed with the same question he had asked in the beginning and called to the retreating figure down the hall, following as closely as his arthritic knees allowed. He realized there was no way to catch up unless by some miracle that open elevator they were headed for cooperated and shut those doors on its own before long. That hope was for naught as Jamie managed to get inside and turn around to block the rest of the entrance with a shaking hand on the close door button and no apparent interest in continuing the conversation.

"Wait! Let the doctor check you first, or, if you want, at least let me drive you home! Please, son, I'm sorry! I got this all wrong! Don't go!"

"Don't call me that!" Jamie returned angrily as his hazel eyes flashed in defiance and those were the last words between them before he punched the panel and effectively cut himself off from his father and the rest of the family. Frank stared back at the closed doors in a state of disbelief which soon only grew more desperate. Calls to the waiting protection detail officers he had ordered to remain stationed downstairs out of respect for Jamie's privacy failed to locate a fleeing Reagan once the elevator car hit the ground level. His son might have been upset, but he was also a well-trained NYPD officer and knew better than try to disappear in front of the Commissioner's handpicked staff. A stop on another floor had seen him escape out of a different entrance altogether and vanish into the city alone.

###

"What do you mean, he's gone?" Danny barked back as he sat in his sister's office after she relayed the facts as their father had reported them. "Jesus! Not gone, gone, right? Just…"

"Walked out and Dad doesn't know where he is!" Erin clarified with worry, already troubled by the news of Maureen Saunders' early morning threats, but ready to ditch their appointed task of locating that missing nurse to drive blindly through the city looking for her younger brother instead. "He said he tried to talk to him, but messed up, then Jamie got really upset and left the hospital without him. Damn it! He's not answering for me either!" she added after trying her younger brother's phone herself and having the call go directly to voicemail.

"Well, what the hell did he expect?" Danny griped as anyone should have seen that reaction coming and had a guard stationed at every door. "Can you blame the kid? That's why Gramps told him to take Eddie along in the first place! He should have listened!"

"You should try," Erin was clutching at straws now, much like their investigation which hinged on Anthony's ability to pull some strings with a contact in the records bureau at the New York State Department of Health to determine if any common employees followed Milner's career. "We all have to show Jamie how much we care!" she insisted.

"Erin, did you not read the text he sent just before Dad got there? I'm guessing right now he doesn't want to hear for either of us! You know how he is… we just gotta give him some time and space to cool off first. It's not like he's going to do anything stupid and head for a bridge," he tried to assure her even though the thought was a little disconcerting considering the gravity of the situation.

"How do you know that?" she argued back before growing more anxious and concerned as all the "what-ifs" started to accrue in her mind. "Jamie walked out of the hospital before he should have, didn't he? What if something happens to him out there while he's all alone? He's not supposed to be overexerting himself! The doctor said it could take eight weeks for his spleen to heal and it hasn't even been one! He could get mugged, or hit by a car, or sit on the subway and bleed to death in a dirty corner while nobody notices because of it!"

"Or he could just take a cab home," Danny tried to reel her back down.

"And then get in a fender bender and die before the ambulance got there because the seatbelt hit him in the wrong spot!" she continued on her end-of-the-world-run as his attempt to rein her in failed dramatically. "Dr. Patricelli warned him about that! What if he forgets and puts it on anyway? HE ALWAYS WEARS ONE, DANNY!" she started to hyperventilate.

"ALRIGHT!" he huffed and pulled out his phone in an effort just to appease her and try to keep at least one sibling from going off the deep end if possible. "He's never gonna answer, so I'll text. At least maybe he'll read it that way. What do you want me to say?"

"That you love him, and you'll come to get him right away, no questions asked!"

"I 'heart' you? Are you effing kidding me, Erin? That's the best you've got? I'm so not going to say it like that! He's not an underage tween out drinking his first beer with some friends!" Danny took offense to what he considered her overprotective mom approach before pausing for a moment to compose something more appropriate and in his own style.

sry kid dis sux. jus be sfe k bro?

"There," he sighed after hitting send and hoping the message would be received and more than just read. "At least he'll know it's from me. Now what are we doing here?" he added impatiently before using an insult gained from Richard Bastien at Sing Sing. "We gonna wait around all day while Detective Abracadabra tries to pull a rabbit out of his hat?"

"I HEARD THAT!" Anthony growled as he hurried across the hall from his office and waived a paper at them in triumph, ready to trade in kind. "And you can kiss my ass, Detective Igot Nothin' Better! What did I tell ya? HUH? Margarite Benson, aka Marge Wilson, aka Margarita Villa… yeah, I kid you not, and finally, Rita Begley now livin' on Remsen Avenue in Canarsie! We just scratched the surface and got four different names, at least as many ex-husbands, but just ONE social security number!"

"Anthony, this is great work! Go bring her in! Make sure she knows she'll need a lawyer so we can work out a plea right away and call her in front of the grand jury by tomorrow. I'll draw up the papers to show them we're serious!" Erin praised her associate even as her brother scowled over the fact that he had not come up with that idea himself. Still, that wasn't going to stop him from helping to take the bitch down who had enabled Milner to do the unspeakable to his mother and caused all this grief in his family now, even if that meant sharing a long ride to Canarsie with a certain equally loud-mouthed nemesis.

"I'm driving, you coming?" Danny proclaimed after grabbing his coat and hurrying out of the office before Anthony frowned at his boss and did the same.

###

"Hey, buddy, you coming? I'm supposed to be driving to Brooklyn Heights, right? I'm gonna get a ticket if I sit here any longer!" the annoyed Lyft driver Jamie had summoned with his app urged, hoping to move things along as he sat double parked on a side street just two blocks away from the hospital.

"Yeah, just a second," Jamie paused to read that incoming text from his brother before stepping out of the shadows of a deep doorway that had sheltered him from being spotted by a roving familiar black SUV a few minutes ago. The last three letters of that message were enough to set him off again his fragile state though.

… be sfe k bro?

"BRO!" Jamie snapped considering the circumstances and hurled his phone down against the pavement in an involuntary reaction that left the device shattered in numerous pieces.

"Hey, you crazy or sumthin'? They just let you off the eighth floor at Kings?" the driver shouted and then reconsidered taking this fare at all, having been on a run of rather iffy customers of late and with no idea he was looking at a member of NYPD royalty. "Screw it! It's not like you can tip me now, anyway!" he expressed a familiar sentiment and drove off, leaving Jamie stranded without any ready form of communication or method of paying for another ride.

"Screw that," he sighed before bending down to pick up what remained of a costly lesson.

"Guess there's only one place for me to go now," he decided before setting off down the alley toward a familiar location he had not visited in some time, still determined to remain out of sight.

Needed a little light-hearted stuff with Danny and Anthony there at the end of a heavy chapter, right? Next up, Eddie gets a visit on the job from a worried father that raises some eyebrows and spends hours searching for her beloved before an unexpected message sends her in the right direction.